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Post details: Economics of Open Source

2005-02-14

23:36:49, Categories: Software Development

Economics of Open Source

"The Emerging Economic Paradigm of Open Source" by Bruce Peren.

An article about the Open Source and how it fits well within the capitalistic economy of these days.
(Although the opponents of the open source often are saying its destroying capitalistic society, etc. I guess they say that about many new practices and technologies).

Abstract

Open Source developers have, perhaps without conscious intent, created a new and surprisingly successful economic paradigm for the production of software. Examining that paradigm can answer a number of important questions.

It's not immediately obvious how Open Source[1] works economically. Probably the worst consequence of this lack of understanding is that many people don't understand how Open Source could be economically sustainable, and some may even feel that its potential negative effect upon the proprietary software industry is an overall economic detriment. Fortunately, if you look more deeply into the economic function of software in general, it's easy to establish that Open Source is both sustainable and of tremendous benefit to the overall economy.

Open Source can be explained entirely within the context of conventional open-market economics. Indeed, it turns out that it has much stronger ties to the phenomenon of capitalism than you may have appreciated.

1 comment

Comments, Pingbacks:

Comment from: psikeyhackr [Visitor]

I use Open Source software. Plenty of it is great software but the documentation is often terrible or nonexistent.

Although I use it I think the concept is dumb. Many of these people are writing software for their egos to show how smart they are. I am not disputing their right to do this and I will use it if it serves my purposes.

I think they should make something I call FAIRWARE though. Say the software is freely availabe but it is up to the HONOR of the user to pay the creator. Include a Paypal account with the software.

The writer of the software has no way of knowing how often a user runs a program. Twice a year, ten times a week, only the user can judge the value of the ware. If 10,000 people voluntarily contribute $10 to the writer that is a significant piece of change. How many of Microsoft's programmers make that much in a year?

Permalink 2005-06-26 @ 15:11